B&Q, rubber stamps, and China

by Ed Gorman, The Times on 20 May 2006 During the Asian Record Circuit, Dame Ellen MacArthur and her team sailed the state-of-the-art racing machine - the 75ft trimaran, B&Q - straight into the contradictions that make modern China such a fascinating country.

Talk to Ellen during a rare moment off duty as I did in the Chinese 2008 Olympic sailing city of Qingdao, the second stopover port since the tour began at the end of March from Yokohama, Japan, and you quickly realised that while she was invigorated by the undoubted sailing challenges presented by the Yellow Sea, it was the far greater challenge of trying to work her hectic schedule within the alien environment of China that really appealed to her.

This was not Ellen on her own or even Ellen at sea working with a shore team via e-mail and satellite phone, this was Ellen leading a fully integrated group of sailors, shore support personnel and fixers and, boy, did she need fixers. While the Chinese authorities may have welcomed the idea of a record tour by the world's most famous female sailor, this did not always percolate down to officials at local level.

While on the one hand China is rushing headlong into the capitalist age with an astonishing rate of growth, as evidenced by the plethora of building sites everywhere you go, there remains the contradictory overlay of a communist-style bureaucracy and a rules-based culture similar to the old Soviet Union.

A racing yacht travelling from port to port along the Yellow Sea coast proved a difficult test for these competing impulses and ideologies and

Ellen and her team found themselves wrapped up in more than just fishing nets as they made their way south from Dalian to Hong Kong - there is still plenty of red tape left over from Red China.

Historically the Chinese have shut their country off from the outside world and the coast has been closed to all but commercial shipping and fishermen. To this day there remains a deep suspicion about anyone heading offshore from Chinese ports for any other reason than fishing or trade and B&Q's novel itinerary was no exception.

At every port in China, Ellen and her team had to establish permission for entry well in advance, customs had to be cleared at each landfall and once ashore, B&Q was enveloped in a passes-only access system which, on one occasion, prevented Ellen from re-boarding her own boat for want of the right permit. The Frontier Police were a constant presence and at one press conference Ellen had the unusual experience of addressing Chinese journalists along with what one of her aides estimated were about 60 policemen.

It was not just rules for the sake of rules, B&Q was on a pioneering mission to a nation with no modern sailing culture whatsoever. This, perhaps, was the most intriguing aspect of the tour as we witnessed a space-age, super-fast sailing machine travel to a country where sailing is still in the stone age. Quite apart from the restrictions which have made the sport a non-starter for ordinary Chinese, the impression one got is that people in China are still genuinely bemused by the idea that anyone would want to head out onto the ocean powered by only sails and their seamanship skills.

It is hard to believe that a nation with such a vast coastline, and with an estimated 700 million people living within two hours of it, could have no tradition of recreational or sporting sailing of any kind. But that is the reality and at present the Chinese are struggling to comprehend what the sport is all about. Ellen remarked that she found it difficult, at times, to break through to Chinese minds when talking about her exploits and it was only when she was able to show a video presentation of her round-the-world record voyage at press conferences and dinners that she felt she was getting her message across.

In many fields, whether it be sporting or commercial, the Chinese are catching up for lost time - golf and snooker are two recent sporting examples which are catching on fast in China - but it is by no means clear that sailing will take off in the same way, even after the 2008 Olympic regatta in Qingdao. At present there is no infrastructure for sailing, no moorings, marinas, fuel supplies, or boatyards and all of this has to be built for a market which may not develop.

In any case, Ellen and her team's experiences offshore demonstrate what an extremely difficult place China currently is to sail in with thousands of merchant vessels to contend with, even more fishing boats with hundreds of thousands of miles of often poorly-marked nets and the challenge of fog which seems to be a regular meteorological occurrence on the Yellow Sea coast. Some say there could be a fortune to be made investing in Chinese recreational sailing in the coming years, others are not so sure.

My visit to Ellen's tour started with a couple of days in Qingdao and then three more in Shanghai. In Qingdao Ellen was feted by a city bending over backwards to prove its credentials as the right and proper home of Olympic sailing for 2008 (wind statistics notwithstanding). The visit of B&Q and that of the Clipper round-the-world race fleet at the same time were opportunities the local champions of the sport did not waste. Ellen conducted a store opening in the city, a press conference, attended a gala dinner in her honour and even tried to help coach some youngsters who were learning to sail as part of a programme to get 1,000 Chinese children sailing in Qingdao by the time the Olympic regatta starts.

In Shanghai my abiding memory was of waiting for B&Q to make its way into the heart of the city up the Yangtze and then Huangpu rivers, escorted by two police launches and a customs cutter. At 11.00pm at night this might sound fairly straightforward but the modern Chinese economy never sleeps and the river was unbelievably busy with merchant ships, sampans and coasters laden with building materials travelling three-abreast in both directions at speeds of eight knots and more. B&Q survived the Southern Ocean but this was probably more dangerous and you sense the nerves in everyone involved as the delicate trimaran edged her way into the heart of China's economic powerhouse with the sirens on the police launches a constant accompaniment.

The Shanghai authorities paid Ellen the great compliment of keeping the lights on for an extra 45 minutes at the great Oriental Pearl Tower across the river in Pudong to welcome B&Q and there was relief all around when she finally came alongside in one piece. 'We're just happy to be tied up on the dock. The river was just unbelievable - you've never seen anything like it,' was how a relieved Ellen summed up that particular leg of her Chinese odyssey.

Notes:

Ellen’s shore team had been on three independent fact-finding missions to Asia, visiting the eight stopover ports that have been included in this eight-week long circuit from Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. This forward planning proved invaluable – without putting these foundations in place in advance, the tour would have been impossible – and this will, undoubtedly, have laid a much smoother path for any other sailing campaign that may be looking to take on the records Ellen and her crew have established in Asia in the future. Especially in China where without the official government rubber-stamp, nothing can happen.